


Sasaeng

by henghost



Series: Amy Obsession [7]
Category: Parahumans Series - Wildbow
Genre: Dubious Consent, F/F, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-13
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:33:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 21,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24163687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/henghost/pseuds/henghost
Summary: Amy travels to South Korea to be closer (much closer) to her favorite k-pop idol, Lee Hye-mi, a.k.a., Lola.
Relationships: Amy Dallon | Panacea | Red Queen/Original Character(s)
Series: Amy Obsession [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1527380
Comments: 18
Kudos: 29





	1. Chapter 1

_ You got two choices / Yes or yes? _

— “YES or YES,” TWICE

On the plane, I remember the first time I saw her in person. Back before I had powers, in Boston, where they were on tour. I made Carol buy tickets and drive Victoria and me to the auditorium, and Victoria was less than thrilled, of course, but I wasn’t going to go to my first concert alone. And then when we got there we went up to the balcony, right overtop the stage, and the lights fell, and the music started, and a starry sky of cellphones opened up all around me. And there she was. My heart stopped beating, my lungs quit. I was in love.

When my breath came back I screamed in Victoria’s face and pointed down at her. Look! I yelled. There she is! Can’t you see!? And she said she could see, but I thought she must be lying because she didn’t seem very excited. But that night I could forget about Victoria. I lost myself in the bubbly melodies and meaningless lyrics.

Her real name is Lee Hye-mi, but on stage she goes by Lola, lead dancer for the five-member South Korean girl group CELL. At this point I knew everything I could know about her, I had seen every available picture and video, but none of it seemed to matter when she was so close, spotlit like something divine. All that mattered was that she was perfect.

When the concert was ending, Lola said, “Good night, Boston!” in a bad accent, and I could have sworn she looked right at me, like she knew.

Then we went home, and a hollow feeling came over me. I lay in my bed, above which hung a poster of her, and I began to cry. I said to myself: Amy, tonight is the happiest you will ever be. And it was true.

#

The plane lands in Incheon and at Customs the agent looks at me like he recognizes me, and he probably does. I go out onto the smoggy street and hail a taxi and give the driver the name of my hotel, which is in the Jung district of Seoul. The drive takes half an hour, and I can’t relax, despite the fact that I’m supposed to be on vacation. At least that’s what I told Carol. I need a break, is what I said to her. And eventually she relented. I suspect she only did it to get rid of me for a little while. I look out the window and there are big storm clouds hanging over the skyscrapers. The air is gray.

I manage to check into the hotel with my broken Korean and ride an empty elevator up to the third floor, where my room is. There’s a twin bed and a TV, which someone has left on, turned to a staticky channel. My body is thirteen hours behind, and I collapse onto the mattress.

Maybe I’m imagining it, but in the next room someone is playing their music, CELL’s music, and the volume is too loud, but I don’t mind. I let Lola lull me to sleep. And then she’s there in my dreams, dancing, laughing.

#

I hadn’t been able to get the idea out of my head for about a year before I went through with it. The year I turned sixteen I was nearing the end of my rope. I was working hundred-hour weeks, and my sister was always telling me about her new boyfriend, and at night my bedroom was emptier than ever. The only solace was Lola, my constant companion. Her voice was in my ears at the hospital, as my hands plunged into countless strangers’ guts. And I would watch hours of her online before I slept. Without her I would’ve lost it entirely.

So I got to thinking: how can we be closer? The first obstacle was obvious — the geography. But once that problem was solved, how could we be together? How could we touch?

I get out of bed and shower and dress and then I check the ziploc of Korean won I’ve taken with me, the sum total of my spartan life. With it, I could stay in this hotel for three weeks or so, which is enough, but staring at the bundle of banknotes, a dread takes hold, and I have to put it back in my suitcase. Without the money I’m nothing, I’m lost. 

It’s noon local time when my phone rings. It’s Victoria.

“Hey,” she says. She sounds tired. “You get there okay?”

“I did. I’m in the hotel. I just woke up.”

“It’s almost midnight here. I’m about to go to sleep.”

“Are you alone?” I ask.

“I see travel isn’t a cure for jealousy.”

“I’m just worried. You’ll be less responsible without me around.”

“I’m fine, Mom. I mean, I should be the one worried, Amy. You flew across the globe to see some popstar you’re in love with. What’s her name again?”

“I’m not in love with her. I’m only on vacation. I needed a vacation.”

“Don’t get me wrong, I get it. She was very pretty that time we saw them live. Lisa or something?”

“Her name is Lola, and she’s not pretty, she’s  _ perfect _ .”

Victoria laughs. “Hey, you don’t have to tell me. You’ve always been such a romantic, Amy. Like, obsessively. Anyway I’m going to hang up. Say hi to Lola for me.”

I roll my eyes and hang up before she gets the chance, then regret my hastiness. My sister’s voice is golden, just like her hair, and I can feel how far away she is, and it’s almost painful. But I don’t need her. Not anymore.

#

I spend the afternoon in bed, listening to CELL. Lola isn’t known for her vocals, but she sounds very clear and on-pitch on the recording, although I suspect it’s been touched up artificially. Mostly I listen to “Summer Camp” on repeat, which is the title track from their third comeback. It’s my favorite song, and Lola is featured heavily on it. Her lyrics are the first words I learned in Korean.

The choreography for the track is some of the group’s best as well. At the chorus the members pair off and perform a kind of waltz, but Lola, the odd one out, dances alone in the center, and she moves her arms in such a way that it feels like she’s asking you to come join, come dance with her. And she sings (in Korean):  _ The sun at summer camp hurts my head / But at night I get to see you / And feel your arms around my waist / And taste your sweet lips _

And maybe it sounds vapid, but I think the imagery is vivid. I can see it in my head so easily: us by a lake, and there’s a fire, and she smells like smoke, and one of the counselors is playing the melody of “Summer Camp” on guitar, and then she asks if she can talk to me in private, and she takes me behind the cabin we sleep in, and she lifts my hair over my ears, and she leans in and kisses me on the mouth, with the music in the distance.

But the song ends on a bittersweet note with the acknowledgement that summer, and therefore summer camp, has to end. It’s almost a call to action. I miss you, says Lola. Come find me.

#

After the sun goes down I leave the hotel and get another taxi. If I’m here much longer I’ll have to figure out the public transportation. Taxis here are expensive and handing cash to the driver gives me an irrational anxiety. I tell the driver the name of the concert hall, and he tells me it will take forty-five minutes to get there because there’s traffic, and I tell him that’s fine.

On the way I look out the window and it strikes me how enormous Seoul is. Tall glass towers twist up into the sky, past the dense layer of smog, which is visible even at night. The smog comes, I’m told, from factories in China, carried toward the peninsula by big gusts of Eastern winds. It’s unfair, I think, to be so separated from the effects of your actions. It happens to everyone. Lola doesn’t write her own songs.

The taxi driver says to me in Korean, “So you’re a big fan of CELL, huh?”

I swallow and fear bubbles in my stomach, and I say, “I guess.”

“And, I don’t mean to be rude, but you look like a tourist.”

“I am,” I say.

“Did you come here only to see them?”

“Um, mostly,” I say.

“That’s devotion,” he says.

“I’m devoted,” I laugh.

“I’ve driven a lot of girls like you around. More than you might imagine. They come to this country like moths to a flame. It’s almost scary. I’m old enough to remember the time before parahumans, before Busan, when you people from the West couldn’t point to my country on a map. But now there are so many of you. It’s like it’s been all planned out. It’s like a conspiracy.”

I don’t know how to respond, and we’re silent for the remainder of the journey. He lets me out a few blocks away from the venue, and I half-jog the rest of the way. Pedestrians glare at me and I’m not sure whether it’s because I look foreign or because I look crazed. 

When I get inside I’m panting and sweating. I’ve made it just in time. The lights go off and there are screams all around me. People hold up glowing sticks, which look like fireflies from far away. I can feel the heat of all the collected bodies against my skin, sticky and cloying. I’m closer to the stage than I was in Boston, at floor level, and when CELL comes out I stare up at them, and it feels better to be below them, below Lola, than above. 

At one point during the show she bends down to touch the hands of the fans (we call ourselves Organelles) closest to the stage, and for a brief moment we’re at eye-level, and I think she must sense me. We’re twisting together like strands of DNA, and we’re so close now. It’s hard to focus on the music or the dancing. I’m terrified. All I can see is Lola. She twirls around my vision like a fairy.

Then the show’s over, and I go backstage with the other fans who’ve paid for the VIP pass. The members are sitting at a long table with bodyguards behind, and there's a line to meet them, which I don’t join. Instead I lurk silent in the back corner, staring at Lola, who is talking to a boy my age the way you might talk to a dog, and then she signs an album cover for him, and they shake hands, which makes me wince. 

After an hour of this Lola whispers something to the burly man behind her and the two leave the room, and I dash after them. Perhaps I’ve gained some tactical ability through osmosis by being around superheroes all the time because no one notices me do it. No one has ever noticed me. I trail the two down a long fluorescent corridor. Lola enters the bathroom, the man stands guard.

I watch this man for a second, and there’s a voice in the back of my mind going:  _ now now now do it now.  _ And so I approach him, trying to look confused, and he’s shaking his head because I shouldn’t be here, but I get closer and reach out and touch his hand and my power flashes and he collapses,  _ thump _ , against the wall. 

Then Lola comes out of the bathroom, and it’s the closest I’ve ever been to her. Her wet hands are glowing. And she looks around confused for a moment, and then she sees the sleeping man, and I know she’s going to scream, and I’m so scared but I manage to grab her shoulder, and I synthesize a big dose of something gabaergic, and then she’s dazed, and her jaw goes slack and drool begins to run down her chin, and after a cursory check to make sure no one has seen me, I face her and wipe the spittle away and hug her so tight I’m afraid I’ll break her fragile frame.

I can’t stop crying.


	2. Chapter 2

_ You got me feeling like a psycho… _

— “Psycho,” Red Velvet

I’m still crying, and there’s this mucus-taste at the back of my mouth, creeping down my throat. Lola’s big eyes are glazed over. I take off the jacket I’m wearing and pull it over her limp torso then yank the drawstrings so the hood covers her face and her little nose peeks out like a cyst. It’s just for tonight. I pull myself together and grab her hand, which is small and delicate, and pull on it, and she follows me down the corridor and out of the building. We emerge by the shore of the Han river, and in its reflection is the neon glow of Seoul at night. 

A block away I spot a subway entrance: stairs leading down below the concrete like some dark portal. Lola follows me there and into the steamy underground and over the turnstile. No one pays us any mind. There’s a big map on the tiled tunnel wall, and I know I crossed the river to get here, and that park, and I pick a line that’ll take me the same way, and the train comes,  _ whoosh _ , right then, and we dash on just in time.

The car is full of white-collar types on their way home, and they eye us with exasperation. There’s nowhere to sit so we stand in the center. I hold on to the rail and Lola holds on to me and in her stupor she puts her head on my shoulder, and I feel myself blush, and a man in a suit sitting by the door gives me this disgusted look. Maybe he’s one of Them. Maybe he knows.

We get off at what I think is the right stop and we walk in what I think is the right direction until, thank god, we reach the hotel, and we go inside and up the elevator, and what strikes me is how quiet it’s been. There are no sirens, there are no screams, there is only the steady thrum of the city and our own whispery breaths. It’s just us. I lead her to my room and close the door behind her, then I go to the bathroom and throw up stinging bile, although really I’m relieved.

#

The thing about these k-pop groups is that they’ll often have a “concept”. Cute, sexy, innocent, mature, pop, R&B, etc. As for CELL, they’re firmly in the “pure” camp. Their whole act projects this kind of virginal, girlish charm. I’m told it’s very popular among young men. I suppose I enjoy it too. It can be easy — too easy — to slip into the fantasy. That adolescent story of awkward discovery and beautiful shame.

It’s all bullshit, of course. CELL used to have seven members, have I mentioned that? First to go was Min-jee. Found floating in the river, waterlogged and bloated. The police said self-inflicted. 

Then was lead rapper Lily, who, presumably from the resulting stress, triggered in a Louis Vuitton store, and of course you can’t be a superhero and an idol, so she promptly got the boot. I heard she defected to the Yàngbǎn. She could turn people to statues with a glance, and the statues were more beautiful than the people ever were. Bet you can’t guess what she called herself…

There was a scandal, sure, but it wasn’t like CELL took such a big hit profit-wise. They took a break for a few months but at the peak of summer they came back with a vengeance. Not only “Summer Camp” but the slower, sadder “Quilt,” and the EDM-influenced “Red Cadillac,” which is also one of their more sexually explicit tracks (lots of coy wordplay/innuendo with “ride” and “don’t go too fast,” etc.). And all were critical and commercial hits. Us Organelles were quick to forget there had ever been more than five of them. I only needed one, after all.

Anyway, all of which is to say: so much for the naive routine.

#

Lola’s on the bed, and she’s turned on the TV, and it’s playing some high-contrast reality show. Her chest rises and falls much too slowly. I’m almost hyperventilating. 

Carefully I lie beside her, and I can feel her warmth, and I think I could stay like this forever, but of course that’s impossible. I turn and stroke her perfect cheek with the back of my hand. I’ve always wanted this. I can see inside her. I can see all her veins and arteries and organs and glands, and she’s just as perfect within. She’s so close and so docile and all, all mine.

But eventually I regain control and, sighing, I sap away the calming agent, and it’s almost funny how her eyes grow enormous and her breath speeds up, and how she whips her head around owlishly.

“Shh,” I say, and I put my hand on her shoulder.

“Where—” she says (in Korean).

“You’re in my hotel room,” I say (in bad Korean). “I took you here.”

“I don’t remember. I was at the broadcasting company and then I remember my bodyguard was…” and she goes quiet for a moment. I brush her dark hair out of her face.

Then she sits up and turns to face me and says with this horrified face: “Who are you?” And before I can answer her soft, delicate hands are around my throat, and her twig-arms belie an incredible strength, and I feel all the blood in my head, and I try to cough but can’t, and my hands are on her and I could knock her out no problem, but I don’t.

She puts her thumbs on my windpipe and her legs on either side of me so that her face is right over mine. My lungs are beginning to scream, but even now she’s beautiful. Her eyes have this feline aspect, and her lips are pink and soft like petals, and with her heavy breath a mist of spit surrounds me. It’s not until the edges of my vision begin to fade that I make her limbs go limp. She collapses on top of me. She weighs nothing at all.

Without moving I say, “Relax.”

She screams in my ear, “What are you?!”

I push her off me and stand up. There’s a lump in my throat. “Look,” I say. “I’m not going to hurt you or anything. Calm down. I’ll daze you again if I have to.”

She flails pathetically and screams, and I worry the people in the next room will hear. 

“Be quiet,” I say. “There’s nothing you can do. Just listen.”

“If you let me go now I won’t tell anyone. I have a lot of money.”

“I’m not — I don’t want money. I just want to, you know, talk.”

“Please. A hundred-million won is yours. Listen, please. My company — They’ll pay you.”

“If you just talk to me I’ll let you go in the morning.”

“You fucking psychopath. God I thought it’d be a man, not some kind of lesbian. I mean, isn’t that a little played out?”

Hearing her swear is jarring. She won’t shut up.

“Kidnapped by a predatory lesbian,” she says. “I’m in a fucking Christian propaganda pamphlet. It’s not real. You can’t be real. I’m hallucinating.”

It sounds silly but it’s how vulgar she is that does it, and I put my hand on her thigh and put her to sleep again. 

#

She has a dancer’s body, all bones and flawless skin. I’m curled up next to her, and I trace her outline with my index finger. The lines of her body curve and swoop like a racetrack. There isn’t an inch of excess. She’s been hammered into a perfect shape, and frankly it’s scary that someone could be so flawless — it’s not how people should look. It’s photoshop in real life. It’s wrong. I put my thumb on her upper lip and shudder as her hot breath flashes against my palm, and I know that she’s in there, that’s for sure.

Mostly I want to know more. I want to know what she was like as a kid. I want to know how her parents treated her. What was the training for her life of idol-hood like? How did the departure of her colleagues affect her? Had she ever felt lonely? Had she ever felt desire? And part of me thinks that she must have, and that there must be answers to these questions, because she’s so eminently human. But there’s another part thinking: she can’t be human. I can feel the inside of her against my fingertips, and the right parts are all there, but it’s like they don’t add up to more than the sum of their parts. It’s like she’s an object, and I guess she is, in a way, when she’s in my arms.

I put my head on her chest and feel each rise and fall. I’ve never been in the same bed as anyone except my sister. I can’t get over how warm she is. Her metabolism is faster than I can wrap my mind around. 

My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I jump and check who’s calling. A blocked number. I feel like I’m going to throw up again. All I can think is:  _ They know, They know, They know _ . But I inhale and move closer to Lola (for strength) and I accept the call.

Whoever’s on the other end is speaking Korean but in some regional dialect, or otherwise too fast for my untrained ears. I try and tell them — the voice sounds male, but I can’t be sure — to slow down, but they won’t stop. The only words I catch are as follows (translations mine): arriving, pretty, number, then, danger, face, soon, sink (appliance), cup, and finally parahuman, which is a loan-word. Then, in what I think is the middle of a sentence, the line goes dead, and the only noise is the whir of the AC. 

The nausea comes back all at once, and I vomit into the hollow of Lola’s neck, and reflexively I fuse the organic matter together, my stomach’s acid converted into simple proteins for use in her anatomy. When I realize I’ve done it I get this pang of regret, but it’s too late. Now we’ll always be connected. I think it’s the most intimate I’ve ever been with someone. 

She’s snoring, and there’s a strand of drool at the corner of her mouth, which twists against her breath, and I can’t look away. My heart hurts just to watch her. 

Someone knocks on my door. All the muscles in my body go stiff. I have to answer — They must have heard me. It would be rude not to, and therefore suspicious. I stand up and put the comforter over Lola and walk to the door. I look through the peephole and see it’s a woman, maybe a little taller than me, face obscured. She’s waiting patiently. She’s tapping her foot — I could swear — to the exact rhythm of my heartbeat. I open the door, and she looks up at me, and she’s white, and she says to me in English, “Excuse me, but might you happen to be Ms. Amy Dallon?”

I must be the color of flour. I say, “I am.”

“Great. That’s great. Now, I apologize for asking, but would you mind handing Ms. Lee Hye-mi over to me?”

And in the second I’m struck dumb, the woman kicks my legs out from under me, and my skull cracks against the frame of the door, and I crash onto the scratchy carpeted floor, and the last thing I see is the woman stepping over me with this eerie calmness and lifting Lola’s body from the bed and carrying her out of the room. I try to stand but then the pain catches up with me, and my body gives out, and I fall into a deep and dreamless sleep.


	3. Chapter 3

_ I don’t know what to do without you… _

— “Don’t Know What To Do,” BLACKPINK

All around me is blackness, hazy and otherworldly, until steadily a dream (or is it a memory?) folds up around me like a paper diorama. Yes — this place is familiar. I know where I am. This is Claire’s parents’ cabin, who are (her parents are) in Greece for the summer, and the whole clique is here: Claire and Alex and Mary and Victoria and I. It’s the first time I’ve ever spent the night away from home.

The action starts like this: Claire says to us, “Okay so I couldn’t find any alcohol or anything but I was reading online and…”

“And?” go the rest of us.

“And so it says if you don’t breathe until you almost pass out then breathe again it’s like you get drunk or whatever so I was thinking I don’t know we could like choke each other or something.” And her face goes all red. There’s some giggling here and there. Then there’s a silence like, Are we really doing this?

First to move is Victoria, of course, who grows this arch grin and turns on her knees to face me, and I feel how much better she is than me like a stinging wound. Her silk-gold hair is long and shining. Her body is full and strong and womanlike. And here before her I’m a mere girl — a weak and puny one at that.

She puts her hands around my throat. 

The others start to cackle, and her grip tightens, and I want to tell her to stop because it hurts and frankly it’s embarrassing, but now there’s no breath for that. I’m the color of a tomato, and all around me is the vicious laughter, and Victoria’s got this determined look on her face, and all I can think is how close her lips are to mine. Then she pushes me to the ground and straddles me, and my body is screaming, and I’m making these pathetic noises —  _ kehkehkeh  _ — and my limbs are beginning to flail, and I’m thinking all this time: She’s really going to do it. She’s going to kill me. And some libidinal part of me, my lizard-brain whose wires are terminally crossed, wants more than anything to simply let it happen.

Then — when my tongue went purple, she’ll tell me later — Alex pulls her off me, and all the blood rushes back, and Claire goes, “So did it work? Are you drunk?” and I nod my head because I feel better than I’ve ever felt before.

#

When I come to there’s a splitting pain all around my skull. I’m still on the floor. Gradually I get to my feet and then I see the empty bed, and the terror comes flooding back, and I feel sweat break out across my back. There’s no denying it now. They know. They’re coming for me next. I’m lost.

“Oh god oh god oh god,” I say aloud, and I curl up into the vaguely Lola-shaped indentation still in the mattress, which is much too small, of course, for my fat, disgusting body to fit in. I’m cold. I’m crying. It’s all so surreal. What should I do? I have no recourse. I’m doomed. Where did she go? Who was the woman? And in the bright white sheets there is a remnant of her smell, which is sweet and reminds me of home, and I can’t quit sobbing. There’s nothing to do now. It’s all over. I’m writhing now like an epileptic, and my vision wheels around the meagre room, and there, mirage-like in the corner, is the minibar. Yes, that’s what I need. I stand and dive frantically at it. There’s this miniature bottle of Jack Daniels whose packaging is all in Korean characters and I twist it open with a satisfying  _ crack  _ and suck in a breath before bringing it to my lips, and then against my tongue it burns like acid, and the pain is just enough to distract me.

It goes straight to my head, and I think, Jesus, I’m so dramatic. I’m such a cliche. 

I’m foetal on the floor with a bottle in my hands like an abused housewife or something, and I begin to shiver despite the alcohol. I know why I had that dream: it’s the first time I can remember being held. The thing about me is I’m obsessed with being held. Maybe it’s some Freudian, ur-Mother, invert Oedipus complex thing — I don’t know. When my sister choked me that night I felt loved. I’m such a caricatured creep. I think I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve been held.

  1. That night at the cabin
  2. When Carol came home drunk, still in costume, and put my head in her lap
  3. My father, crying one night, patted my side; he thought I was sleeping
  4. Caught unawares while walking with my sister, a nameless villain wrapped their arms around me
  5. Last night, Lola’s suffocation



Likely there are more instances, but I can’t remember any. Counting them is an elaborate form of self-harm. It felt so good to be held by Lola. Now it’s over. Now They’re coming for me, and no one is here to save me. I’m on the other side of the world. I only ever wanted her to hold me. Nothing more: I’m not some pervert. I’m lonely. It’s only that even from a million miles away Lola is perfect. This is what I tell myself.

I drink again and think with a resurgence of cold panic how much this must be costing me. These amenities are traps. How much money has just gone down my throat in the form of Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Whiskey, distributed internationally by the Brown-Forman Corporation? The equivalent of thirty USD? A hundred? There’s no way of knowing.

With the adrenaline induced by this thought I stand and scramble around looking for my cash. It’s still there, thank god, under a stack of underwear, and I clutch it like a child, then finish the bottle. Soon my sight begins to whirl, and I feel calmer. My muscles are slack and loose and warm. I sit by the window and gaze over the circuit-board streets, which are glazed over and made hazy by the smog and the booze.

Victoria calls.

I fumble around for my phone and pick up. She knows. I’m sure she knows. Fear pierces through the thin layer of drink, and she has to say hello three or four times before I can respond.

“Yes, I’m here,” I say finally.

“Amy,” says Victoria, “Amy, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I say, and then someone knocks at the door, and I jump.

“So how are you? You saw a concert? Are you getting around okay?”

“Yes. I’m fine. CELL was at this stadium in Gangnam, and it was great,” — I’m saying this while I creep over to the door — “I was a little scared getting over there. You know me. Plus there was the language barrier. I’m fine. CELL was great. Lola was great. I got so close to her. Front row, you know. What was weird was that for most of the set they are all in these matching sailor outfit school uniform things, that was a little weird. I don’t even think they were Korean public school uniforms, they looked more Japanese. Weird, right? What did that mean, you think?”

“I don’t know,” says Victoria. She sounds very disinterested. I’m right by the door now, and I can feel someone behind it. The TV switches on suddenly and starts to make this whining noise, and I jump again and stumble drunkenly, and now I’m sure my visitor knows I’m here. There’s no hiding. Another knock. 

“Hey, look, Victoria, I’m going to have to call you back.”

“Are you on something, Amy? You sound high or something.”

I hang up and undo the sliding lock and brace for the worst and open the door. It’s a man I’ve never seen before. “Hello,” he says in Korean.  _ Annyeong _ . Something about him is wrong — something about his silhouette. I can’t be sure. It’s like he’s too stiff, like a cheap action figure. 

“Hello,” I say. 

He bows, and I put my hand on the top of his exposed head, so my palm is on his forehead, and I will for him to collapse. But he doesn’t collapse, and I’m about to try again but then I realize what I’m touching isn’t organic. I have no view of this stranger’s interior, and I stumble backwards. 

“Yes,” he says. “I’ve heard of you. I’m afraid your power won’t work on me.”

Now it clicks: I’ve heard this voice before. This is the man who called me before the woman showed up. I recognize his strange dialect and nervous timbre. 

“I’m not going to hurt you or anything,” he says. (I can barely understand him.) “I was trying to warn you, you know.”

“Why won’t my power work?” I half yell.

“Ah, well, you see, I’m made of plastic.”

“Plastic?”

“It’s difficult to explain. Here, stand up. We should talk. Do you want to get something to eat?”

#

What am I going to do? Resist? I take some of my money and follow him to the restaurant in the hotel lobby. I order the cheapest option, ready-made  _ kimbap _ , and I sit with the stranger (who doesn’t order anything). He must be seven feet tall. People around us glare at him, and for the moment I’m thankful I’ve found a lightning rod.

We sit at a small wood table and the man looks at me with this blank expression and I say, “Plastic?” because I can’t think of anything else.

“Yes. My body is at least seventy-five percent plastic.”

“Like Michael Jackson?”

“Who?”

“Nevermind.”

“I’m what is known as a  _ Case Fifty-Three _ ,” and he says these last words in accentless English. “Are you familiar with the term?”

“Yeah. I thought you said you know who I am.”

“Yes, Amy Dallon. I know a lot about you. I know a lot about your family. Glory Girl and Brandish and the rest. New Wave. Or whatever you’re called.”

I’m thinking I’m out of my depth, very much so. I don’t have the bandwidth remaining, after the kidnapping and the yelling and the beating and the robbing, the robbery of Lola from me. There is very little left. I look at my food. I’m not hungry. Why did I buy it? What a waste. I’ve always been so wasteful.

“I’m not trying to threaten you. I saw you at the concert. I lurk around there sometimes. I saw what you did. I’m going to choose to look past it. I believe we are on the same side, in the grand scheme of things. Strange bedfellows, right?”

I don’t even have the energy to nod. 

“So, Amy Dallon,” he continues, “were you aware, when you did what you did, how important Ms. Lee Hye-mi, also known as Lola, is? Not only as an internationally beloved pop idol but as a pawn in a chess game whose stakes are the life and death of the planet?”

“I guess I wasn’t,” I say.

He rolls his big stiff eyes. It’s true: they look like scale models of the real thing.

“Well, whether you meant to or not, Amy Dallon, you’ve stumbled headfirst into a worldwide conspiracy. Hate to tell you like this.”

“Plastic? You look more like wax, to me. And how can I trust a wax-man?”

“I tried to save you. I tried to warn you. Or don’t you remember? Look — you’re in danger. Still. You don’t even know the name of the people who are after you. Believe me, they’re after you. They’ll come for you and your family and there will be no one who has even one tenth of the power needed to stop them. You don’t know who they are — few people do. You are an ignorant girl, Amy Dallon. You don’t know anything. You don’t even know  _ my  _ name.”

“I was waiting for you to tell me, Wax-Man.”

“My name is Bongtu. And the woman who took your precious Lola works for an organization known as Cauldron.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CORRECTION: In Chapter 1, Amy's cab driver mentions an Endbringer attack in "Kyushu" when really he should have mentioned the Endbringer attack in Busan. The text has been fixed.

_ Can’t get you outta my head... _

— “Outta My Head,” SOMI

A year and a half or so after their debut, CELL — at this point only five members — participated in a reality show that documented their “vacation” to Greece. The show’s title was, “Greece the Wheels,” an allusion one of their more popular b-side tracks, “Grease the Wheels.” These kinds of things aren’t uncommon for idol groups, although certainly in CELL’s case the circumstances were strange. There was a dark pall over the show’s six-episode run due to the respective departures of Min-jee and Lily, which had occurred only a few months earlier. 

From the first episode what stood out to me was the directorial influence. It looked like some kind of art-film. These long, still shots of the members packing set to dreamy music, all with a kind of pastel color palette — which they must have built a set to do — in the backdrop. Clean, icy angles. Stark, geometric blocking. But I checked: no director credit. 

Another odd thing was that the scenes were out of order. It would go from the flight to the group on the big flat Meditteranean beaches, dressed in these conspicuously demure bathing suits (much to my chagrin). It was difficult to follow. But it was like words whose letters have been jumbled except for the first and last. You knew what it all meant. 

All the same it was really entertaining stuff. We (the audience) got to see the girls in a context which allowed for their personalities to come through in full. Most of the time, of course, we could only see them sing or dance or, if we were lucky, hear them recite canned responses to interview questions. Their parent company, H! Entertainment, is notorious for its strict management with regard to their idols. Dietary restrictions, “dating bans,” et cetera. Maybe it was the distance from home, or maybe it was only excellent acting, but the remaining five members of CELL exhibited an uncharacteristic lack of inhibition in “Greece The Wheels.” Which was a beautiful thing to see.

I watched the whole thing in one go when the English subtitles were finished. I made Victoria watch it with me, too, and I have one of those highly vivid memories that you sometimes think might have come from a dream of her complaining that the whole thing was too slow-paced for such a trashy subject-matter, and then, presumably from boredom, putting her head on my shoulder and falling asleep and drooling onto my shirt while, onscreen, Lola danced through the Parthenon.

Anyway I think the reason I’m remembering it now is because of one scene in the third episode, which struck me even in my dopey youth as out of place. En route to the Acropolis, the group find themselves in a kind of slum. Royalty-free horror-movie-type music plays over a sequence where they travel under some big concrete bridge, and out of the shadows there comes a gang of maybe five homeless people, dressed in old coats and rags. CELL is filming themselves on handhelds at this point, and so there’s no camera crew to protect them, and all the members get this horrified (or maybe contemptuous?) look on their faces like, I have no idea what to do in this situation.

Then one of the homeless people, a fifty-something man in a big potato-sack-looking hood, approaches Lola. I remember it’s specifically Lola he approaches. And, shot in  _ Cloverfield _ -style shaky-cam, the man lowers his hood and reveals that instead of flesh and hair he’s made of some squishy white substance. It looks like lard. And the strange part is Lola doesn’t appear afraid at seeing this in the slightest. Her eyes get steely. The others are saying in English and Korean and Greek: “We don’t speak the language,” and, “We don’t have any money.” But Lola is silent. The man is panting, making this awful squelching sound, and he raises his Crisco-hand, as if to touch her face. The others start to yell at him when he does this, but Lola holds her own hand out to say, It’s fine. I’m fine. 

The other homeless people, who don’t appear to have any kind of deformation, don’t say anything, don’t move, only stare ahead grimly. The man cups Lola’s cheek (which made me squirm in my seat) and they look into each other’s eyes. And I remember thinking: “It’s like they’ve met before.”

#

Bongtu leads me out of the hotel and into the moist dark of the parking garage, where he’s left his black Camry. When he walks he makes a kind of ratcheting sound, like his joints are squeaking together, and it puts my teeth on edge. The car’s interior has the smell of a frozen food aisle. I sit in the passenger seat, and Bongtu squeezes into the driver’s seat, and the air is dead, and this Benadryl daze comes over me, crust and drool. My tongue has the sugary aftertaste of booze still on it. 

He’s about to start the car but then he says, “Amy Dallon, before we do this, I have to know a few things.”

I say, “Shoot.”

“When you kidnapped Lola,” he says cautiously, “did you rape her?”

I bite my tongue. “Why do you want to know?”

“It’s important. You’ll understand soon enough.”

“Of course I didn’t.”

“Did you want to?” he asks. “I’m not judging you. It’s only that I need to know.”

“I can’t answer that question. I don’t know the answer to that question.”

“I understand.” And he turns the key to start the car. 

He drives us through the insect-leg streets of Seoul. It’s all neon and food-cart food gone bad. He says there’s something I need to see at the H! Entertainment building. At a red light he switches on the radio and maybe I’m hallucinating but it’s CELL. One of the b-sides from their debut EP called, “Island.” 

_ We sailed to the island / Sun on our backs / You and me and her, and we / Played all day… _

(All in Korean except for “island”)

I’m on the verge of tears but I don’t want Bongtu to see me cry. There’s something about him I find comforting, although I’m not sure I trust him yet. Not entirely. But where would I be without him, at this juncture? I would be alone, trapped in some foreign part of the planet. I would have to call someone to help me. I would have to call Victoria, and I would have to tell her everything, and then it would be her asking me those questions.  _ Did you rape her? Did you want to? _ My eyes burn.

These visions of conspiracy Bongtu has shown me are a comfort. A similar flavor of comfort to the sleepless nights with the swirling magic mess of image and sound that carried Lola across the world to be in my bed. Images of her with friends. A video collection of her sneezes, of her coughs, of when she’s been angry, of when she’s been sad. And in all of them so beautiful it hurt. It was like she could cradle me that way, through the screen, wrap herself around me, even though we’d never met before. This cosmic chess game Bongtu described makes me feel the same way. Like I could disappear into the cobweb of not knowing.

We pull into another parking garage, and I follow Bongtu into the side-entrance of the H! Entertainment building. It requires a security-card, which he provides, and ushers me into the freezing linoleum belly of the beast.

He says, “I used to work here. I was only a janitor, of course. That’s how I stumbled onto this whole thing in the first place.”

“But, Bongtu, you still haven’t described what this whole thing is.”

“You’ll see. Come here. Just down this hallway, through that door. You’ll see.”

I follow him until we reach what looks like a closet door that’s labeled simply, “Supplies.” 

“Right through here,” says Bongtu, and he pulls a ring of keys from his pocket and twists it into the slot and pulls the door open with a creak that echoes through the empty building. What’s inside isn’t supplies. It’s a wooden staircase, which leads down into blackness. “Down here,” says Bongtu, and he steps onto the first step. When I do the same he reaches behind me with his long artificial arms and closes the door, and there’s no more light. 

“I can’t see,” I say.

“There’s light at the bottom. Follow me. Stay close.”

With each step further down into the black I feel like there’ll be nothing beneath me this time. My heart leaps around inside me. But after a few minutes of this uncertain descent Bongtu says, “We’re here,” and there’s a click, and I’m blinded.

When my eyes adjust I find I’m in a room, a small room with a concrete floor, which smells of stone and earth and vinegar. I look around and I see a number of surprising things:

First is a table, really a workbench, which looks like it belongs to some kind of Tinker. It’s covered in blueprints and crumpled scraps of paper and wires and screws and that kind of thing. What’s interesting is that the blueprints seem to have the diagram of CELL’s signature lightstick, shaped like a red blood cell.

Then, at the back wall, there are at what first glance I think are mannequins. But they’re not mannequins — they’re life-size dolls, and when I get closer I see that all of them look exactly like Lola. They stare ahead blankly. I put my hand on one of their cheeks and then recoil: it — she — is alive. Or at least made of something organic. I check again and find the Lola-doll’s insides are inhuman, instead a mass of swimming matter, unlike the real Lola’s insides, which I can still see when I close my eyes.

I breathe and shudder and turn to look at Bongtu, who’s bent his massive body over the workbench, and I say, “Bongtu, Wax-man, we’re here, and I’m still, well, I’m still very confused. To put it mildly. And frankly at this point also I’m bordering on terrified.”

“Things have changed since I was here last.”

“Bongtu, really. What’s happening to me?”

“You’re in it now, Amy Dallon. There’s no turning back. You’re in the dark heart of it all. When I was here before, there were papers all over this desk labeled, ‘Cauldron,’ and the papers spoke of powers and money and governments and destruction. And on each of these papers was a symbol.” He faces me and pulls his shirt over his head, revealing his flat and shining torso. He points to a spot above his navel where, faintly, there is a sort of C shape, branded into his skin that isn’t skin. 

“There are gaps in my memory, Amy Dallon. I wasn’t always this way. This mark was not always here. Someone forced this body onto me. Cauldron did.”

I say, “But, listen, what does it have to do with Lola and CELL and H! Entertainment? Why is their plan for world domination dependent on Lola? Why do they need her? What did those questions you asked me earlier have to do with anything? What are these freaky fucking dolls?”

“I can’t answer all of your questions. However, perhaps this piece of information will answer some of them: your precious Lola is a parahuman.”

“What do you mean by that, Wax-man? You mean she has powers? That no one knows about? That I didn’t notice when I was — when I was with her?”

“I thought you knew, Amy Dallon. I thought your kidnapping scheme was part of a greater effort on behalf of New Wave to uncover Cauldron’s misdeeds. But, well, I was mistaken. But yes, Cauldron, via some means I do not entirely understand,  _ bestowed  _ powers to Lola. It was in the documents, although the documents did not specify what sorts of powers she received, or how she’s been able to hide them. Only that she is in possession of them. And so yes, for some reason Lola is instrumental to Cauldron’s goal. That is why they had to take her from you. ”

I’m about to ask more, yell more, but I’m interrupted by the sound of the door we entered through swinging open. 


	5. Chapter 5

_ I’m a little monster… _

— “Monster,” Red Velvet - IRENE & SEULGI

All my breath is gone. I look at Bongtu but he looks as afraid as me, and my body freezes in place. The little oubliette is so small — there’s nowhere to hide. From above me I hear: “Who left the lights on?” in Korean (gender or age indiscernible). Bongtu crouches beside the workbench and gestures for me to join him, but still I can’t move.

There’s the clop of a shoe on a wooden step, and this is finally enough to stir me, and I dart over to the side of one of the living Lola-dolls. I grab its — her — hand, and then I feel her insides, and I get an idea. 

The intruder’s footsteps are getting louder and louder, and I close my eyes and morph the not-flesh into something new. Perhaps new is the wrong word. The foreign biomass becomes a living motor, an amateurish brain. The glassy substance which forms her eyes has its chemical makeup distorted into one more closely resembling the real thing. 

She is alive.

I whisper a command into her ear and she steps forward, into the stairway’s landing, and then there’s a scream. 

“Lola!” goes the intruder, adding  _ sunbaenim _ to the end of her name, thereby indicating that Lola is the intruder’s superior/elder. “You scared me. What the hell are you doing here?”

I meet Bongtu’s eyes. He’s looking at me like I’m the villain from a Gothic novel.

The newborn Lola says, “Bleeur…”

“What?” says the intruder whose face is still obscured. “Are you drunk or something?”

“Uurgha!” goes Lola. 

“I’m sorry, I’ll leave you alone. I just wanted to check to make sure the lights hadn’t been left on accidentally.”

“Blorgor!”

And then the intruder is leaving, quicker going up than coming down, and eventually the door slams behind them, and I can breathe again. Lola yanks at her own hair. I lurch forward to put my hands on her and put her sleep, and she crumples to the ground. Bongtu is still glaring at me. Lola’s chest heaves with breath.

“What is wrong with you?” hisses Bongtu.

“I panicked.”

“Kill her. Quick.”

I bite my tongue and think about it and then say, “No. I can’t. I’m sorry, I really can’t.”

“We have to leave  _ now _ , Amy Dallon. If we are discovered here they’ll kill us. Or worse. And we can’t afford another mouth to feed.”

I look down at Lola. Even in that paper-towel shape she’s perfect. “Fine. Go on without me — it’ll take me awhile to undo this.”

“All right, Amy Dallon, but I’ll tell you this: if they capture you, kill yourself before they can do what they want with you. I’ll keep the car running.” And he shudders and heads back up the stairs. 

Lola. Lola Lola Lola. Her anatomy is plastered against the back of my eyelids. I lean down and finish what I started, recreating from my memory, except for the brain, of course. Even her organs are beautiful. If I squint her left kidney looks like a cartoon heart. The only things missing, by the end, are her mind and the splash of vomit forever infused in the original.

I feel as though I’m on a frozen lake at the beginning of summer. After this, there’s no future for me. I can’t go back. I can’t go back home and see my “mother” or “father” or Victoria. Beautiful Victoria is no longer beautiful — not when I’ve been so close to Lola. So I may as well enjoy it. I may as well finish skating this last lap around the rim before performing a final pirouette and crashing into the icy depths.

My new Lola is wearing a sort of slip. I wake her up, tell her to stand, and then I lift the silky thing over her head. It’s just like I remember: she has a perfectly flat stomach, the cutest navel I’ve ever seen, small breasts with dark areolas, a tangle of pitch-black pubic hair that obscures her genitals. 

_ Did you rape her? Did you want to? _

Of course I didn’t want to. I could never do something like that. I only wanted to talk with her. I only wanted to know her better. What’s so wrong with that? She’s beautiful. I go back and forth between “I want to be her,” “I want to be her friend,” and “I want her to be inside me.” It’s the same way I used to feel about Victoria. I can never understand my own feelings. I’m so lonely. All my life I’ve been so lonely. They’re coming now. There’s only a little time left. I want to kiss her. Anyone. I want to be kissed. I want to be held. I want to be held so badly I could scream. My new Lola has the brain of a lobotomy patient. She’ll be dead soon. I have to kill her. I want her to hold me. I don’t know what I want. I’ll die a virgin. I want to die right now. There’s no going back, there’s no going back, there’s no going back. 

I lean forward and kiss her soft pink lips. She says, “Gurrha!” I giggle at her joke. She’s so funny. I tell her to kiss me back — only if she wants to — and she does. I put my tongue in her mouth. It’s my first kiss. Is it? Or is this only elaborate masturbation? Could I ever experience anything other than that? With what this world’s done to me? Lobotomy patients often masturbate compulsively.

_ A predatory lesbian… _

This is what the real Lola thinks of me. This is what Bongtu thinks of me. And I’m sure this is what you think of me. 

Maybe it’s true. Maybe I was born that way — born in a storybook world with hateful cliches branded into my skin — or maybe I’m real, maybe I’m lonelier than you’ve ever been, ever will be. Maybe I’m just evil. All I know for certain is that my Lola is warm, and I tell her to wrap her arms around me, to hold me, and she does. She does it so well. So unself-consciously, the way a human (or parahuman) never could. Her arms are so heavy, and they’re not going anywhere. I lick her neck. I grab her right breast, which makes her squeal like an eight-year-old. I’m so wet, and this fact nearly makes me throw up, but I force myself not to, because if I added my vomit to this Lola she would become too much like the real thing, and I could never live with myself if I was doing all this to the real thing. 

Then, when the urge to go further gets too strong to ignore, I step back, grab Lola by the shoulder, and kill every cell in her body, and she crumples to the ground, where she will rot, and I climb the stairs and sprint out of the building and into Bongtu’s Camry. My first actions as a murderer. 

#

Before she was in CELL, Lola was a participant in an audition show called “Idle or Idol?” The conceit of the show was: a lot of the major entertainment companies sent a delegation of promising trainees to the show’s headquarters, where they were asked to perform before a panel of judges which consisted of prominent dancers and singers and rappers, and based on the quality of their performance they were given grades and separated into tiers. These tiers determined the kind of training you received. Those at the bottom learned the more fundamental aspects of singing and dancing, whereas those already proficient in these areas took classes to help them with their “charisma” or “star quality”.

Lola was always close to the top of the leaderboard, of course, and so most of the time she was on camera she was focused on trying to come across as cool and personable, which, at first, she was quite bad at. The teacher would tell her things like: “Treat your fans like your friends!” and then in a tearful talking-head segment she would confess to the camera that she couldn’t do this because “[she’d] never had real friends before!”

At first I thought: that can’t be true. Then I thought: maybe it is, maybe she’s just like me, maybe a lifetime of bone-breaking practice in pursuit of idol-hood has precluded you from the comforts of a so-called normal life, much as the burden/gift of my power has done to me. But then finally I came to the conclusion that whether it was true or not didn’t matter, and that she was only saying that in order to appear “relatable,” to the audience, who must themselves be lonely, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be paying attention to a trashy Korean reality show.

This suspicion was all but confirmed in the final episode, in the Evaluation. To win the show and the prize of debuting, you would have to rank in the Top Five. The rankings would be determined by your performance in this final Evaluation. 

So when it was Lola’s turn, the head judge, who was the CEO of one the “Big Three” Korean entertainment companies and who resembled an Asian Patrick Bateman, told her that what they, the panel of judges, were looking for in her performance was improvement in the charm department. Lola nodded gravely and the music began and she started her self-choreographed dance to the song, “Burn,” by Ellie Goulding. There were shots of the judges looking quizzical, concerned. Has she really made any progress?

But then, abruptly, she stopped. The music kept playing as Lola crumpled to the ground and began to weep. An uninterrupted thirty-second of her weeping. I was weeping myself by the time someone else said anything.

Korean Psycho went, “Lola- _ ssi _ , what’s wrong?”

Through the breaks in her sobbing she said, “I’ve just … I’ve just tried so hard. But I can’t do it. You have to believe me! I tried so hard! I just wasn’t born with an ounce of charm in my body!”

Another long pause.

Then the same guy looked at the other judges and said, “I think I speak for all of us when I say that the fact that you were able to admit this just now proves you have made remarkable strides in your ability to convey your personality to an audience of strangers! I’m putting you in the Top Five! You made it!”

And she stood, still crying, and bowed and thanked them again and again.  _ Kamsamnida _ .

But then, in a style which recalled the works of Park Chan-wook, we saw a flashback sequence in which Lola told the camera that she had planned this scene all along. There were even clips of when she practiced her crumpling to the ground and her fake crying. I remember thinking she was such a genius.

Her cunning, though, was all for nought. The funding or something fell through, and the group she had been promised a place in never debuted. Maybe that was what made her trigger.

#

Bongtu drives us to an abandoned parking lot at the edge of the city. We don’t speak for the entire half-hour ride. He switches off the engine, and he leans his massive body over and puts his impossibly light arms around me. 

He is holding me.

It’s not as good as when either Lola did it, but he’s better at it than my father, who’s always so awful when it comes to physical affection. I can’t hold back my tears any longer, and we stay like that for a few minutes, me dampening his clothes and him going, “Shhh, Amy Dallon. Shhh.”

Eventually there’s no moisture left in me, and I sit up and say, “So what now, Wax-man?”

He’s about to answer but is interrupted by my ringtone. I pull my phone out of my pocket and it’s Victoria, of course. 

“I have to take this,” I tell Bongtu.

“Amy!” says Victoria.

“Victoria,” I say. 

“Amy, I’m worried about you. I couldn’t sleep.”

“Don’t worry. I’m fine. I’m having the time of my life.”

“We’ve known each other long enough for me to know that’s a lie. I can sense it. You’re in trouble, aren’t you?”

“I’m not. Really, I’m not. Don’t worry. Go do some good or something.”

“No no no. You can’t fool me. I’m coming over there.”

“You’re going to come to South Korea to check up on me?”

“I can do whatever I want. I’m a superhero. In fact I’m in the air right now.”


	6. Chapter 6

_Peek-a-boo!_

— “피카부 Peek-A-Boo,” Red Velvet

Victoria’s fist into the asphalt leaves it spiderwebbed. Bongtu beside me goes, “So there she is,” and I nod and shiver. The cold I’m sure is due to the icy wetness at my core from the Frankenstein scene earlier. Vicky’s got on goggles like a fighter pilot and civvies of sorts, winter coat she’s unzipping now, snow-ruffed Uggs, teal chinos clinging tight. . . . Bongtu says, “Quick, before she spots us: I have shown you what you’re into, Amy Dallon. You see now how much of a mess you have made. Do you not? But there’s nothing you can do. Not for the time being, at least. Nothing I can do, either.” — Vicky’s swivelling her head around, first to her phone then to the half-filled lot’s vastness — “Listen. We are — you and me and now your sister — we are engaged in a _cat and mouse game_ [in English]. I will need your muscle soon enough. But not now. It will have to wait. I expected this, I expected another Dallon to show up. It all adds up. It’s a plot. Don’t you see! I need another day, two, to figure out where the key players will be and when. I cannot be with you during this time. Do _not_ tell your sister what I have told you. If They know she knows she will be in immediate danger. You, already, are in immediate danger. It was a miracle you did not die when they took her back. They must need you alive, somehow. Use your sister’s might to protect you. A _cat and mouse game,_ don’t you see!

“Let me tell you ‘A Little Fable,’ Amy Dallon. It goes like this: The mouse says, ‘Alas, the world gets smaller every day. At first it was so wide I ran along and was so happy to see walls appearing at my left and right, but these high walls converged so quickly that I’m already in the last room, and there in the corner is the trap into which I must run.

“And now the cat says, ‘But, Ms. Mouse, you’ve only got to run the other way,’ and eats the mouse right up.

“Don’t you see! That is our predicament. Your sister . . . She cannot know I exist. I must leave, while it’s still dark. I will contact you and her when I am sure I have found the solution. Use her. You will need her. Goodbye for now, Amy Dallon.”

And he unlocks the door and maneuvers his ungainly rigid limbs onto the asphalt and is off sprinting toward the shadows. Victoria calls coplike: “Hey, you!” (in English), but doesn’t have the energy to chase him in earnest. I’m trying to think how she found me so quick. Still a-shiver I shimmy out the door Bongtu left swinging and wave my hand high to get Vicky’s attention. She runs over with a grace like she’s still in the air.  
“Amy,” she says. “Who the hell was that?”

“Who?” I say. “How did you find me so fast?”

“Ah, funny story — you’ve got a microchip in you. No one told you?”

“What the fuck, no, no one told me I had a fucking microchip in me like a dog.”

“Our whole family does, Mom just told me. She’s worried about you, you know. But don’t change the subject: I saw you get out of that car. Whose car is that? You manage to seduce one of those idols you’re so into?”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Ooh, mysterious. . . .”

“You don’t need to worry about me. I don’t know why you’re here.”

“Reconnaissance. Mom, really, is the one who was worried about you. I trust you, personally. But I offered to go in her place because frankly I also needed a vacation. Although . . .” and she leans forward a bit to sniff at me, “Amy, what exactly were you doing in that car? And you’ve got a bruise on your face?”

“I wasn’t fucking some Korean guy in his car, if that’s what you’re asking. Nor was he abusing me. I fell.”

“Hey, not that it would be a problem. I’m glad you’re getting out of your shell. So can I stay in your hotel room or what?”

“If you carry me there.”

“My pleasure!” says Vicky, and I turn my back to her so she can lift me like a little child, one arm holding up my back, another under my (not quite dry) thighs, and up she goes. Moths and smog hang like lava-lamp blobs in the gelatinous nighttime, and soon enough I’m coated in both. Seoul lit up below is Chernobyl aftermath. Victoria’s warm from a quick metabolism, the exercise, my weight. She flies low for the sport of it. We slalom through the skyscraper spires. For an instant I wish she’d shishkebab me on one of the spiky needles. She’s so warm and smells so much like home, so warm I think I might turn to ooze, and this thought snuffs out all others, and I’ve passed out before we can land. . . . 

#

I wake up under strange covers. I’m terrified for the second it takes to remember everything, which I suppose is karma. More coming soon, I’m sure. Vicky exits the bathroom to my left towel-clad and with wet gold across her clavicle. “Can I borrow some of your clothes?” she says, and bends to search my suitcase before I can answer.

I say, “I really love it when you carry me like that.”

“I know, I know. Everyone’s jealous of my flight! I would be, too, if I weren’t me.”

“And your strength.”

“And my strength!”

I try not to look when she slips off her towel. The sense-memory of my Lobotomy-Lola is still very much present. I’m worked up in every sense of the word. Vicky looks great in my old _Secret of NIMH_ graphic tee. . . .

She flops beside me on the bed, where once there was an outline of Lola 1.0 in the mattress. Maybe Vicky was _my_ Lola 1.0. . . . She says, “This’ll be so fun! The Dallon sisters in Seoul. It’s like a movie! Or like — in the air I was remembering that one slumber party we had — remember? — at Claire’s place?”

“I remember you strangling me.”

“I remember you liking it.”

“. . .”

“Ugh — what time is it here? It feels like the middle of the day.”

“It’s almost dawn, I think.”

“What’s the nightlife like here?”

“How would I know?”

“Wanna find out?”

“Since when are you into that?”

“Amy can I ask you something?”

“Into . . . _clubbing?_ ”

“Why are you here? I mean, I sort of had the impression — you expressed to me — that you experienced _debilitating_ _guilt,_ Amy, about all the lives you could be saving but aren’t. So what’s changed?”

I think for a second. I’d like to tell her the truth, which is that I would not only let people die but kill them, Victoria, if it meant I got to touch Lola one more time. But this, of course, would worry her, so I say instead: “I can’t think about it. I need a break. I need a break or else _I_ will break, Vicky.”

“Then let’s do it,” she says. “Let’s let off some steam — or something. So you can get back to it.”

“Gangnam, I’ve heard, is the place to go.”

“I’ll carry you.”

She steps over to the curtains, draws them back, fiddles with the bolt holding the crystal glass door closed, and at last gets it open, and the shrieks and squawks of the city fill me up once more. She steps into the starry dark and then farther. Open air for a stepping stone. She whips around weightlessly to face me, and I can’t help but blush, for here is my very own Peter Pan come to take me to Neverland in her thick sturdy arms, and so I go and join her. She makes me jump. “I’ll catch you,” she says, and smiles bright enough to make it through the light pollution. I lift my legs over the freezing railing and stare down at the Christmas tree street and shake. “Come on,” she says. “You weigh nothing. Not to me, at least.”

I think: so what if I go splat? and leap, and all at once cold is gone. I realize: this is what I live for. The bits where my life is another’s hands are the only bits I enjoy. I hope she crushes my chest by flexing her biceps. I hope she lets me fall. That’s all that seems to matter. More lights — more and more and more — whiz past. 

“I heard,” she says into my ear, “that Seoul is the plastic surgery capital of the world.”

“Are you thinking of getting work done?”

“I just thought . . .”

“I don’t know what you’d . . . get done.”

“. . . I thought for a second, Amy, that you’d come here to work in the black market. I mean as some sort of augmentation dealer from a cyberpunk novel. You’d make a killing. With that sort of money you could _buy_ one of those idols.”

“You can be pretty dark sometimes.”

“Lips.”

“What?”

“If I were to get plastic surgery I would get some kinda enhancement for my lips. My lips are too thin and have been ruined by combat.”

“Your lips are perfect. You have very red and full and kissable lips, Vic. And if you really can’t stand them I can change them for you.”

“ _That’s_ dark.”

She lands us in an alley. Ammonia and trash smell everywhere, and someone bundled in too many coats to count sits with their back to the wall ahead of us, muttering, and when we head for the light at the end of the tunnel their hand comes slithering to grip my ankle, and I yelp, and Vicky enters a fighting stance.

“I know you,” they say (in halting Korean). They reach up and lower their hood and I see that it is a man. Dark and glistening complexion, black eyes in which I can spot my reflection. And it’s true: he’s looking at me like he knows me. 

“Let go of me,” I say.

“What are you saying?” says Vicky.

“I know you,” says the man, excited now. “I know you, I know you. You can see inside me, right? I know it! I know you can. Touch me. Touch me and see who I am. You can help me. You can help, I know it!”

“Amy should I hurt him?”

“No,” I say. I get to my knees. He extends his hand, and I take it, and at once I can tell something’s wrong. His organs are out of shape and misplaced, e.g., his stomach sort of curves around his spine, and his kidneys sit squished together so tight they’ve become cartoon arrowheads. And there’s excess as well. Strange bits of matter I have to sound out like new words. Somehow insectile . . . somehow piscine. All coming up from his guts. . . .

I reach to undo the zipper of his coat — clinician in me kicking in, mitigating the stink — and then lift up his shirt, and first from his navel, next from either end of his pelvis, come salt-smelling crab’s legs, twice the size of my head, and I lurch back before their needle tips can get inside my eyes. The man grunts — from relief, not pain. Vicky rushes forward but I tell her it’s okay. The man says, “All wrong. It all went wrong. Fix me. You can fix me. So, so wrong. Fix me, fix me.” And by the headlights of a passing taxi I see the stylized C just above his pubic bone, and I can’t breathe. I stand up and grab Vicky’s hand. 

“Don’t go,” he says. The legs from his stomach flail wildly, caught in a flickering neon-green glow by a nearby sign, barbed fingers wishing desperately to be a fist. “Please. They know. Before They get you, please, fix me. Please, please. I know you, so They know you. _Amy Dallon._ They will find you. You’re trapped. There is nothing you can do.”

I yank Victoria away, out of the alley, down the block till I can no longer hear his screams. “ _Amy Dallon! Amy . . . Dallon! Amy . . ._ ”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ["Tagging a fic 'Amy' and 'kpop' is like punching your reader twice in a row"](https://old.reddit.com/r/WormFanfic/comments/kia7a3/the_dark_face_of_obsession_reviewing_henghosts/)

_Look at you, now look at me . . ._

— “How You Like That,” BLACKPINK

“Jesus that was fucking scary,” says Victoria. I’ve still got her hand in mine. “I mean, what was he even saying?”

“Disgusting things. I shouldn’t repeat them.”

“I need a drink.”

“Drinking age is eighteen here, Vicky.”

“Oh c’mon. And who’s gonna refuse us, huh? A couple young foreign girls, lost in the big bad city? Not to mention the extreme, overpowering awe they’ll be experiencing.” And she flashes her aura a bit as if to remind me, and the shock it sends straight through to my core nearly trips me. 

“Don’t fucking do that,” I say.

“Oh you love it,” she says. “But seriously let’s find a bar or something. I took some won from your suitcase when you weren’t looking.”

“Don’t fucking do that either!”

“It’s so clean here.”

“Money makes me very anxious, Vicky. You know that.”

“Seoul is supposed to be like Manhattan on top of Manhattan — so how do they get it so clean?”

“Civic duty or something. Communist China is only like a couple hundred miles that way. It’s in the air.”

“You’re right, I’m sorry. For stealing.”

We turn a corner. Concrete lit into white neon stretches semi-endless until at last it turns to asphalt, and it’s true: there is little to no trash. Smog, sure. But no litter. On our jaunt I spot more homeless than discarded cans, bottles, etc. Then another block down, speaking of geopolitics, we pass a bundle of soldiers with little US flags on their fatigues. Vicky says, “I love a man in uniform,” and I’m not sure if she’s being sarcastic or not. When they’re behind us they all wolf-whistle at once, and in perfect harmony, and I think: pigs.

Here’s a little hole in the wall. No name above the door. Vicky yanks me inside: a basement with dirty tables spaced too close together, a bar at the far end, all before a tiny stage, at the moment populated by a trio playing a jazz cover of CELL’s “Colony”:

> _Bacteria sticks together_
> 
> _You and me, a sort of symbiosis_
> 
> _Too sick to last forever_
> 
> _Still we stick ‘round till necrosis_
> 
> [This is from the Rap Break, a staple of the genre, all in English. Performed in the original by a pre-parahumanity Lily. Originally from Indonesia, she acted as the group’s designated Anglophone. They haven’t promoted so much in the West since she left. ]
> 
> _We’re killing ourselves for the reporters_
> 
> _A bio-trap of our own creation_
> 
> _So just drop the bomb, bring out the coroner_
> 
> _At least I’ll die feelin’ this sweet fever sensation_

The vocalist (male, stringy) sings in a smooth dreamy lilt. What’s strange is the drummer has instead of a cymbal a sort of cast-iron cage in the shape of a dinner bell, which, when hit, sounds like a broken triangle, sad and sharp and angry. Their audience consists mostly of young women. Victoria takes me to the bar and bends forward and microdoses the air with aura (which gets my breath heavy) to order two bottles of soju, of course, because it’s the only drink that fits in the American’s conception of Korea. The bartender’s face goes glassy. He says it’s on the house.

She takes hers and swallows and sighs so hard her breath covers my head, then she heads into the crowd. I sit on a stool and put my face in my hands. Lost, lost. I picture tunneling through the center of the earth to return home, ending up in Oklahoma somewhere. I imagine more soldiers will be there once I pop sweating and nude above the surface, who will tell me that I am a pervert, and take me to prison, stick me in a CELL where I’ll spend the rest of my life. That might be nice.

“Excuse me,” says someone to my left, in English. I turn to find a white guy a couple stools down. Thirty-something, ginger, rosy with booze. “Excuse me, are you American by any chance?”

I’d like to tell him I don’t know English — he could be one of Them, of course. But he’s smiling a sad sort of smile I know all too well, and the more I look at him the more I think he looks like he could be my father, so I tell him yes.

“Hey, me too!” he says. “Sorry for bothering you, I guess I’m sort of desperate for a taste of home. Can I buy you a drink?”

I nod and shift over to sit beside him.

“Frank,” he says, and shakes my hand hard.

“Candace,” I say.

“Well, Candace, are you here for business or pleasure?”

“Um,” I say. “Pleasure.”

“Same. Well, I guess it’s both. I’m a film critic, so I thought I’d check out the home of the New Korean Cinema everyone’s so excited by recently on my way back home. I’m coming from Japan.”

“Why were you in Japan?”

He looks at me for a second before sipping his whiskey. “A funeral,” he says. “My brother.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Can I tell you about it? I haven’t told anyone about it. I went alone. I went to Osaka to bury my brother. He was born in fucking Orem. You ever been to Orem? People there probably think Osaka is a biblical character.”

“Tell me,” I say. “Really. I want to hear.”

“And our parents . . .” he says. “I mean, they couldn’t care less. I asked them to help with the money and Dad told me, ‘I’m not gonna pay for a coffin. He’s going to hell anyway. Let him rot.’ So it came out of my pocket. It must’ve started when he was about your age. He had, you know, Asperger’s or something. He didn’t have any friends in high school. Super fucking smart but no friends. You know the type. All he’d do was sit in his room and watch — what else? — Japanese anime. He was obsessed. He’d talk — try to talk — in Japanese at the dinner table, which you can imagine how that made Dad feel. 

“Then one night we’re supposed to go out, all of us, for a family dinner at a nice restaurant. This is a special occasion. We weren’t exactly affluent growing up, and our parents were really serious about giving the Church ten percent. So we’re getting into our Sunday best when my brother says, ‘Can my girlfriend come with us?’ You can see where this is headed. At first I was thinking he was serious. At first I was really happy for him, you know. Then he comes running out of the house with a life-sized pillow that had a picture of a cartoon girl with massive fucking tits on the front. ‘Everyone,’ he said, ‘this is Aeri. First thing to know about her is, she’s really nice. . . .’ Jesus. That night was the first time I saw my dad cry. 

“And it was so fucking eerie. He tried to feed her — feed _it_ — spaghetti. Can you imagine? He’d put his head close to hers and pretend like she was whispering in his ear, and just cackle and cackle. Mom and Dad fought for a long time that night about whether to kick him out of the house or not — I heard it all. In the end they let him stay as long as he, you know, shaped up. Do more for the Church, get a job. I guess they had good intentions.

“And I don’t even think it was a sexual thing. I think he thought it would be _disrespectful_ to jerk off to her. It was love, Candace. I don’t think I’ve come across a purer love in my whole life. Certainly not personally. . . .” Frank finishes the glass he’s on and orders another.

“So he did get a job. And he saved and saved and saved until, after he graduated, he could afford a ticket. Two tickets. I drove him and Aeri to the airport, and he was the happiest I’d ever seen him. I waited with them at the gate. Before he got on the plane he said, ‘Frank, I love you so much, man. Without you I’d be dead.’ And that was the last time I saw him alive.

“We talked over the phone a couple times, while he was over there. At first he was having the time of his life. People, I guess, were more used to his ilk over there. Or something. I should’ve talked to him more. I should’ve convinced him to come home. It just got worse and worse for him. He didn’t know the language, not really. He talked a lot about how the Japanese viewed suicide differently. He couldn’t keep up. Then one day I get a call. I pick up, already knowing, and someone tells me in broken English that he’s dead. Of course. Of course. When I went to see his body they showed me the photos, too. He hanged himself with a blanket, from a tree, and in the pictures you could see the liquid shit that had slicked down the back of his legs. He wrote a note. Wanna know what it said? He addressed it to me. It said, ‘Frank, I cut the pillow open. She was in there. I cut her in half.’ That’s it.”

Frank’s features go ugly and tears begin to slip down his face. “I’m so sorry,” I say. I’m about to throw up. I get up and scramble for the bathroom. I lurch shaking into a stall and puke bile the color of candied bacon. After it’s all up I sit on the toilet and shiver, and check the walls for symbols, clues. I hear someone else enter the bathroom, and then another. They’re giggling, tripping. They enter the next stall over, and I hear the rip and tear of lips on lips. I feel the lingering acid eating up my teeth. I think of my vomit still stuck in Lola’s neck, how our respective DNAs will touch forever, double-helixes wrapped together like two young lovers holding hands. She was in there. She was in there. There’s a girlish moan from the couple beside me. I stand on the toilet to get a better look. 

It’s two women. One of them’s sort of pudgy, and with hair dyed auburn; she at the moment is licking at the cocoa nipples of her partner, who’s thinner and taller and is wearing a yellow wig. Hold on. . . . Then the one with auburn hair looks up at me, and I see that on her face are painted little splotchy dots: freckles. She looks into my eyes and laughs. They don’t stop. I watch them for a long time, I watch until they’ve both had orgasms. I watch them kiss with a perfect lack of urgency, then join them at the bank of sinks. I’m about to ask them for their names, although I suspect I already know what they are, when there’s a scream from the other side of the door. Dozens of people screaming. 

I bolt for the door and turn a couple dark corners till I’m back where I started, and the people who were previously watching the show have gotten up from their seats to press together — no music anymore — toward the door, and I’m going, “Vicky? Vicky?” because surely it involves her, and gradually louder, “Victoria! VICTORIA!” and pressing through the mess of bodies to see, finally, that there’s a hole in the wall, as though someone’s taken dynamite to it . . . and I get onto the street at last and spot at the end of the block movement, people moving uniform, military, and I turn to face one of the spectators and ask them, “What happened?” and they shake their head (this young almost androgynous guy) and shake their head until I realize I’m asking in English.

I get the Korean out. He says, “They took her, They put the cage on her head and took her.”


	8. Chapter 8

_ Done-done done-done-done-done _

— “DUN DUN,” Everglow

K-pop came to me like a vision. A quasi-religious epiphany. I’ll tell you how. A nice night off I spent chugging (nearly chucking up) cherry-colored and -flavored cough syrup. The OTC dissociative stuff, no codeine or promethazine. I had discovered long ago that it is one of life’s great pleasures to go numb and itchy-scalped alone — always alone — and tumble through the neural-network recommendations for hours and hours and hours, motionless, an opal glow from my cheap little laptop as the sole illumination; this was my idea of heaven. And that night I found at the end of it a treasure I could bring back. CELL, of course. Their newest MV, which was named, funnily enough, “TREASURE,” a spiritual sequel to “Island.”

The concept, too, seemed intent on getting through to me. It was your classic  _ Fantastic Voyage  _ setup. At the video’s outset the girls, at this point all seven, dressed in designer scuba gear (e.g. Armani wetsuits, LV flippers, etc.), shrunk themselves down, and entered into a boy (on whom, presumably, one — or perhaps all — of the CELL members had some sort of crush) via his left nostril, and once inside raised themselves dripping with phlegm onto a red and oozing rampart, and the bubblegum pop began. They encountered your run of the mill anthropomorphized antibodies, lavalike stomach acid, and so on, all on route — this was the Big Reveal — to the boy’s heart, rendered in smooth crimson  papier-mâché, at which point Lola redonned her Chanel goggles, cut a hole in one of the aortae, and dove inside. . . . Then logos, and a cut to black. You can imagine how this made me feel. I was hooked. I was doomed.

Here was a new rabbit hole. A sedative pool of quicksand into which I could sink my thoughts while I fixed up gangsters and supremacists. I quickly learned lots. Lola, a.k.a Lee Hye-mi, born 1995 to an upper-class family in Busan with an older sister and a younger brother and attended an international school in Jeju at which she participated in dancing lessons and singing lessons and auditioned five times(!) for H! Entertainment before the sixth attempt which involved a cover of T-ARA’s “Roly-Poly” I mean you should see the dance I think they uploaded the footage like a real old-school traditionally girly capital-I Idol pre-hip-hop influence sort of thing and Carol I know the New Wave gig doesn’t exactly provide us with disposable income but please please please could you find it in your hard heart to buy for me the exceptionally beautiful retro headband she’s wearing in that video I mean I think it would help people at school actually you know like me but so anyway which apparently they thought it was very good because they let her in finally(!) and put her through the sort of world-class soul-crushing training regimen for which the K-pop industry is known worldwide and then that survival program thing I mentioned earlier and then a year of dead space hold on Vicky Jesus really another one(!) that must be four this week you know I’m very busy I mean only earlier today I had to patch up a five-year-old with leukemia like thank god I was there but you know what that does to me like psychologically right of course you know you look great today by the way but yes I’m sure the ambiguity re debut must have been hell on her teenage psyche very relatable then there were teaser photos there’s one where she’s squatting on the bed of a pickup truck and the thing about enforced chastity even if it’s only for the benefit of the public is that the most meager bit of suggestive material becomes almost pornographic like I remember many lonely nights with another one of those teaser photos which featured Lola in a blue pleated miniskirt and these little releases continued for a few months before CELL made it at last to their first single an unmitigated hit by the way “Walls” and seriously what a journey. . . .

I learned also that I was one among a massive wave of Western recruits. Around this time, when I was first getting acquainted with the culture, as it were, I met this girl at the hospital. I had allowed myself a break and was resting on the ledge of a big bay window (masochistically, I should add — I hate the sun) and there was a sound coming from below, a tinny muffled bubbly sort of sound, and once I recognized it as a CELL b-side (“Scalpel”) the stress and self-loathing seemed to slip away. It transported me. So I said, “Excuse me,” and tapped her on the shoulder. She looked a little younger than me, half-ugly in a way that struck me as sensible. We talked a couple minutes. She said she had been an Organelle from the very beginning. She said her bias (bias here = favorite, more or less) was Seo-min (a very respectable choice, by the way. Very respectable. Seo-min is the group’s designated Visual, i.e. the pretty one — obviously she’s not the member  _ I _ find the most “visual” but that of course is why there were seven of them, different strokes and so on; groups [for the most part] outsell solo acts for precisely this reason — which is a classification that might come across to a Western audience as in poor taste, or even insulting, but is one which makes more sense when you consider the fact that K-pop as a cohesive genre came about in the age of television, not the age of radio.1 That’s why songs get released  _ with _ the MV, instead of it being a sort of bonus/afterthought.). She didn’t seem to recognize me, thank god (I was in a subtler version of my Panacea getup, no robe). I told her my name was Carrie. She said her name was Mera. Which about used up my capacity for conversation with strangers, so I said I had something to take care of, and left with my skin all hot.

I thought about Mera a lot in the hours following, as I acted the angel up and down the bleach-smelling halls. She was the first person I’d talked to in who knew how long who wasn’t a parahuman or an otherwise parahuman-adjacent person. I thought about how strange, or at least improbable, it was that she was obsessed with a girl group and not, like most teen girls, into the boy bands. . . .

I made a point to wear street clothes the next time I showed up at the hospital, so that if she were there again, she wouldn’t get the slightest inclination as to my real identity. And sure enough she was in the same spot, listening to the same music. I deflected any questions regarding my personal life. She said she went to Winslow. I didn’t ask her why she was at the hospital. I knew what the answer would be, and I was terrified of it.

So we developed something of a rapport over the next couple weeks during the five-minute intervals I’d allow myself to spend away from the dying. The newest news of CELL releases, or even a TV appearance, would get us hyperkinetic. Lola et al. were a constant presence in our increasingly intimate conversations. Meanwhile I came up with a series of lies for why I was there — my grandfather had contracted, against all odds, stage IV breast cancer. She offered her condolences. Then she said, “I’m sort of in a similar boat. It’s my mom. She’s got this heart condition, I can’t even pronounce it. The doctors say she’s got weeks left at most.”

I said, “I’m so sorry,” and nothing else. It was a feverish sort of rationale: if I had told her about my skill set, and had her take me to her mother’s deathbed so I could cure her, Mera would be grateful, she might even hug me, and that would be the last time I ever saw her. But in my silence the rapport would last for weeks longer (at least!).

Turns out, though, that the doctors had been overly optimistic. Three days later Mera’s mother kicked the bucket. I offered her a shoulder to cry on, which she declined. I never saw her again.

Now pacing the spotless Seoul streets with only vagrant screams for a soundtrack, with my eyes all blurry and my cheeks all puffed, I can’t but think this is the fate I’ve earned for myself. A brisk chilly summer wind sweeps over the city and picks up what little dust its citizens have left behind. Left behind. The sky’s gone a staticky sort of teal. Light does not equal heat. 

The day’s business has begun for the salarymen and -women, all in their Thursday(?) not-quite-best, by the time I collide with Bongtu. He steps jumpscare from an alley to grip my shoulders and hold me in place, and I’m half tempted to ignore him and shove past, but I’ve got no energy left for that, of course — I’m not sure I stand much of a chance against Wax-man at the best of times, anyway — and so instead I let my legs go limp and sob into his rigid forearm. 

“I’m so sorry, Amy Dallon,” he says (in English). “I watched it all happen.”

“Were you following me?”

“What else could I do? What else could I do but protect you?”

“You didn’t fucking protect anyone. Wax-bastard.” I hit his chest the way I’ve seen distraught heroines do it a million times.

He pulls me into the alley so I can sob away from any prying eyes. I wish he were warmer. The plastic forms a sort of cast through which no heat can escape. “She’s dead, isn’t she?” I say. 

“No, Amy Dallon,” he says. “They need you, like I said. She’s a hostage.”

“I need her, Wax-man. I really do. More than Lola. I need her I need her.”

“I know where she is. I can take you there.”

“Shoulda led with that!”

“It is only that, well, I have over these years gained some understanding of the way They operate. I wanted to warn you. It is likely that torture will be involved if they recognize you are desperate. They need you at your worst.”

“Why the fuck would I care? She deserves it anyway. Show me where she is. I need her. Please. There’s nothing else for me. Now, Bongtu, please, please.”

While Vicky-bound I disappear once more into the quicksand:

So speaking of boy bands what’s important to understand about the K-pop industry in the global marketplace is that overall young women are a much more reliable consumer base than young men, and therefore boy bands are significantly more economically viable than girl groups, and while girl groups who market themselves toward a more female demographic (CELL, by the way, with their “pure” concept, cannot be included in this group) have in more recent years garnered success comparable to their male counterparts, this trend or rule of thumb still applies, and so on and so on and so on and so on . . .

* * *

1. This fact also helps explain the often socially conservative style of K-pop acts, why (although it’s beginning to change somewhat) their songs involve awkward first loves, shy glances, etc., even while pop songs elsewhere have become increasingly concerned with graphic depictions of sex and drug use — because during the series of dictatorships between the Korean War and S. Korea’s so-called “democratization” the major television stations came under complete government control, and were therefore subject to the draconian censorship rules set up in the ‘70’s, which involved, e.g., the complete banning of tattoos on broadcast. a. [<-]

  
a. It’s worth mentioning, too, that it was President Park Chung-hee who set up the Korean Arts and Culture Ethics Council (which isn’t even the craziest thing he did on that front — so intent was he on preserving this social conservatism, in fact, that there are also these crazy pictures you can find of the roving bands of police to whom he gave measuring tapes so that they could ensure women’s skirts weren’t too short and that men’s hair wasn’t too long), the organization that — to this day — enforces all these regulations; and that Park’s daughter, Park Geun-hye, is well on her way to becoming S. Korea’s first female president.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, if you're curious, [ITZY's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAlom3q9RF8) recent cover of T-ARA's "Roly Poly" is pretty top-notch.


	9. Interlude: Guy Who Purchased a Lola Doll, or, Real Meals for the Rotten Ones

_ Used to be one of the rotten ones and I liked you for that _

_ Now you're all gone got your makeup on and you're not coming back _

—"Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl," Broken Social Scene

A few days after the funeral I got a job at the local Burger King. It was my first job and I was nervous about the interview but it went okay. I wasn't very good at it. I worked the register and I think the customers could tell how nervous I was, and also I'm sure the purple-black rings around my eyes were disconcerting. But I think the manager had heard about what happened and took pity on me, and the pay wasn't so bad, and so it only took a few weeks to save up enough.

I'd gotten into UCLA and was supposed to start in the fall but I couldn't face it so soon. My parents were concerned and supportive but I think they were also angry that I would be living with them a little longer. Mostly I wanted to be alone, but also I was terrified of being alone. I was on this massive comedown. 

What I was saving up for was a doll. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't some kind of sex toy, it's only that I thought it would help. And they'd just released a true-to-life replica of Lola. I had to convert all my money to Korean won to buy it. Her. 

She showed up on my parents' doorstep in a tall cardboard box, and I managed to lug her to my room before anyone else could see. I removed the packaging and let it fold away around her. She was wearing a silk white slip -- no shoes. All her measurements were accurate: five-seven, slim, that signature short hair. She stared straight ahead with cold glass eyes. I touched her forearm cautiously and her skin felt just like real skin.

She also came with an instruction manual but it was all in Korean so I couldn't read it, and so I had to grope around awkwardly for the on-switch, which I eventually found behind her left ear. It made a satisfying click when I pressed it, and then there was a noise like a computer starting up. The buzz and whir of internal fans. I stood in front of her and she blinked. Then she smiled and tilted her head and opened her mouth full of white square teeth and said, " Annyeong ."

She sounded frighteningly similar to the real Lola. Maybe they hired a voice actor. I said, " Annyeong ." She was still grinning at me with her plump pink lips. 

"Do you speak English?" I said.

"English?" she said in a bad accent. "I don't speak much English."

"Right," I said. And she tilted her head the other way like a baffled dog. 

#

I met Emma in my last semester of high school. We had a class together, maybe Economics, and she saw me reading a Mark Fisher book and said she was "surprised someone else around here felt that way politically." I said neither did I and she laughed at me. Her teeth were all crooked and yellow but her skin was smooth and entirely sans blemish. She took a pill-bottle from her pocket and removed two Adderall from it and threw them in her mouth like it was candy, and our teacher a few yards away gave her this look but said nothing. "Want one?"

All I knew about her before that day was her pill-popping reputation. It didn't bother me. Mostly I was excited to have a girl talking to me, which didn't happen often. Later she told me she got the pills from her younger brother who had a prescription but didn't like "how they made him feel." 

I took one of the little orange disks from her and said, "Won't it make my breath stink?" And she breathed hot air across my face, which was putrid.

A month or so later, right at the start of summer, I was in her room. The shades were drawn, and little blades of light shot through, across her twin bed made with baby-pink sheets. Her walls, floor to ceiling, were plastered with posters of an Asian woman. Shots from modeling gigs or sometimes with a mic in her hands, sometimes dancing. 

"Who's this?" I said.

"Lola."

"Who's Lola?"

"She's this Korean pop idol."

"Not one of those boy-bands?"

"I like Lola better."

Lola really was very pretty. I wandered around her cramped fruit-smelling room and took in the shrine. She (Lola) was wearing a variety of different hair colors but it was always shoulder length, and in the shots of her dancing it frilled around her forehead like a crown. Emma had the albums, too, right next to Lenin on her bookshelf. 

"Jesus, Emma. You're obsessed."

"That's a strong word."

"I always thought you were straight."

"I am. Basically."

"I also thought you were like a Marxist."

"So?"

"So isn't that industry really, you know, exploitative?"

"Aren't they all?"

"It's just like a little creepy."

"You don't mean that."

"I don't. She is very pretty."

"You're telling me."

She was cross legged on the floor and I sat beside her. This was the first time she'd invited me to her house, although we'd been spending time together since that day in Econ, and now I understood why. It's not like we were dating. It's just that we got along. She lay on her back and looked up at the ceiling fan and grinned. She was never self-conscious about her teeth although to tell the truth they did not look great.

I said to her, "Sometimes I don't think you're real."

She said, "Oh I'm real all right. Some might say too much so."

#

A few weeks or so before she killed herself Emma took me to Burger King. At the time Burger King was running this promotional campaign for "Real Meals," which were sort of like un-Happy Meals, as it were. You could get the "Pissed Meal" or the "Blue Meal," or others like that. Supposedly it was for Mental Health Awareness month. Lots of ad copy like: "It's okay not be happy sometimes." That sort of thing. 

She paid for both of ours, and they came in these solid-black boxes. Then she took me to a park bench down the street and we sat and unpacked our food and she gagged at the sight of it.

"I've lost my appetite," she said.

"Why did you want to do this again?" I said.

"I just sort of thought it was funny." She took a bottle of Adderall from her pocket and swallowed one with her Pepsi.

"Maybe that's why you're not hungry," I said.

"It's just sort of so unsubtly late-capitalist. Like shamelessly so."

"And you thought that was funny?"

"I guess so. I guess I like that kind of thing."

"Maybe you thought you would like it ironically, but you can't even like it ironically."

"That's depressing."

I took a bite of the flat thin burger and said, "It's not so bad."

She gave me an Adderall. 

#

Emma and I never had sex. I'm not sure I ever wanted to have sex with her. In fact I'm still a virgin. One time we did kiss, however -- my first kiss. We were in her room, which was where we spent most of our time after she revealed her obsession to me, and we were listening to Lola's newest album:  _ Dreamworld _ . Her voice blared tinnily out of Emma's cracked Samsung. I couldn't understand any of the lyrics, of course.

I said, "So how did it start? This thing with Lola."

"I don't know," she said. "She's just perfect."

I looked at all the posters and said, "She is beautiful."

"But that's the thing: she's not beautiful. She's perfect. It's not the same thing. No one's perfect. Not even the person inside Lola's skin. But Lola is perfect. And when I look at her or listen to her I feel like it doesn't matter what I'm like. If I'm not pretty or smart or interesting enough. Because she's there. She does it for me. I don't know."

"I think that's the intended effect."

"I know it is."

"I mean, you bought this album, right? You didn't pirate it?"

"And what's so disgusting is that it gave me pleasure to spend money on it. Because at least some of it would be going to Lola."

The air was full of dust. I sat beside Emma and looked at her face. She always wore this pitch-black eyeliner. 

"Maybe you're right," I said.

"When have I been wrong?" She turned and looked at me. Then she kissed me. Not for very long, I didn't have time to react. "Sorry," she said afterward. "I'm impulsive."

All this raced through my when I was with my Lola. She would sit on my bed and I would put my head in her lap. I wondered what they'd put in her thighs to get that fatty texture just right. 

I discovered early on that she'd been programmed to comfort you when she detected crying, so after work most of the time I would make myself sob and put my head in her lap and she would run her plasticky fingers through my hair. She said soothing words into my ear, none of which I understood. 

One time I got curious and took off all her clothes. A box had come after the original with a full wardrobe in her size. Dresses, pajamas, stuff to wear on stage. I got into the habit of dressing her in the morning, before I went to my shift at Burger King. But that day I took them all off. She didn't seem to mind, although she got this look like a frown. There was nothing there. Only more smooth not-skin, curving around a vaguely womanlike frame. She had no navel, no nipples, no genitals. It made sense, but for some reason the sight of her torso without any human characteristics brought me to tears. When she saw she made a noise like, "Aww." And she stepped forward and hugged me, and I hugged her back.

#

Emma killed herself the traditional way: Aspirin, hot water, a razor. Before, I would've said she wasn't the type, but I think deep down I knew it was always a possibility. Her mom broke down the bathroom door and found her body floating in red stew. Only seventeen. She'd skipped a grade. It happens.

There wasn't a note or anything, but I could guess why. We'd been talking only a few days before. She was telling me she was having trouble keeping up, staying awake. "That's why I'm into the uppers," she said. Maybe I should have known. Maybe there was something I could've done. But that's what everyone thinks, isn't it? And of course I could hardly disagree with her. And I don't think she would've thanked me if I'd lied.

The morning of the funeral I got an email from her. At first I worried it was some kind of haunting situation, but realized that she'd written it before she died and scheduled to arrive afterward. It said simply this: "Maybe I'm not real."

The ceremony was in a funeral home in the nice part of town. Her parents were well-off. I got the impression they were the rich-but-absent type. I was wearing the only suit I had, and it fit poorly. I'd never been to a funeral before. All these strangers glared at me when I got to the room with her casket, which was open, and for a moment I was struck dumb by the sight of her corpse, her rigid posture, her face made-up with the kind of cosmetics she would never use. They'd put her in long sleeves, of course, a sort of gown. She looked plastic.

All in all I hadn't known Emma for very long. And all the time I had known her I was waiting for her to be someone else. I was waiting for my dream girl. But Emma was always more depressed than manic. Not to mention she was awkward and far from being conventionally attractive. Parts of her, maybe, I thought could have come from the strange fetishistic desires always tumbling through my mind. Other parts were the furthest you could get away from all that. And certainly I never fantasized about falling in love with a dead girl.

Her dad gave a very nice eulogy. By the end of it I was the only there who wasn't crying. I remember thinking: I don't know who he's talking about at all.

#

At the end of that summer there was another tragedy. I only heard about it a few days after the fact, but apparently Lola, the real Lola whose given name was Lee Hye-mi, got kidnapped. She managed to escape but of course she wouldn't be able to finish the promotional tour for  _ Dreamworld _ _. _ The nation was embroiled in scandal. The rumor was that it was an obsessive fan, but the more likely answer in my estimation was that it was a false flag, so that she had an excuse to take a break without appearing lazy. But still I couldn’t be sure.

I was spending a lot of my free time getting caught up with her discography. I convinced Emma's family to let me take home some of her Lola merchandise. To do it I had to tell them we'd been dating. The music wasn't exactly my style but it reminded me of those hazy afternoons with Emma. Plus my Lola was programmed to dance whenever she heard her own songs, and she was a great dancer. She was so beautiful. The news that the original might be in any way unhappy was greatly distressing. 

After the kidnapping something between her and I changed. Whenever I was bawling in Lola's lap, which at this point was a nightly occurrence, images of her fleshy counterpart over on the other side of the world would pop into my head unbidden. Images of her tied up and terrified.

And then nothing could calm me down. And I would have these nightmares, too, where Emma would rise from her coffin, still coated in the silvery embalming fluid, made up like a clown, and she would shuffle zombie-like into my room and hug my Lola and cry into her armpit and they would kiss, and I would wake up covered in sweat. 

At night she stood in the corner of my room with her eyes wide open. And sometimes I'd turn on my side and see her shadowy figure and I couldn't look away. The night would dissipate outside my window while I listened to the steady thrum of her inner machinery. Then at BK I'd be liable to fall asleep at the wheel and let the fry-oil get too hot and pop up onto my exposed skin. 

So something had to change. 

One day at the end of my shift I stayed around and searched the cavernous back room where all the disused plastics ended up, and I found two leftover "Real Meals," both labeled "DGAF," still in their dehydrated state, and I took them home with me. Lola clapped her hands together when she saw and said something that I took to mean she was excited. I put the "food" in the microwave and then took two of my parents' nicest plates and a scented candle and set all of this on a card table in my room.

Lola said something that probably meant, "Is this for me?" And she grinned wide. She had the most beautiful smile. I swallowed a handful of fries and nearly coughed them up. She prodded at her food and said something that probably meant, "I appreciate the thought but I'm not equipped with the hardware necessary to digest food."

"I know," I said in the most soothing voice I could muster. "I know."

I ended up eating both meals. Then after cleaning up I took Lola by the hand and led her into the backyard. The sun was setting, and it made her not-skin glow like amber. There were tears in my eyes by now. "I'm sorry," I said to her. She said something that probably meant, "It's beautiful." 

I took the bottle of lighter fluid from our family grill, and the long black stick lighter. I squeezed the bottle over Lola's short and silky hair and watched it trickle down over the gown I'd put her in that morning. She only pouted.

I said, "I'm so sorry, Emma. Lola. I'm so, so sorry." And then I flicked the lighter on and touched the flame to her glistening neck, and at once her whole body erupted with a  whoomph , and the air was filled with the scent of burning plastic. It's not like she could feel pain, and so she just stood there as her skin and then her metal insides turned black. I doubled over and wept until the last embers were gone, by which point the sun had disappeared. 

In the dark I gathered up the ashes and charred body parts and carried them in a sack to my car, and I drove to the cemetery and buried Lola right next to Emma. I rubbed my hand over the smooth gray headstone and whispered goodbye for the last time. 


	10. Chapter 10

_ Make ‘em whistle like a missile bomb, bomb / Every time I show up, blow up (uh) _

— “WHISTLE,” BLACKPINK

Picture us in our post-trigger depression. It felt, I bet, like postpartum depression: all the chemicals keeping us upright expended in one teenage explosion, one paroxysm of despair. So we were empty, is what I mean, and yet still together.

Victoria’s costume premier remains monumental in my memory of the period. I remember when she strutted all catwalk before the family in the final perfect version after weeks of failed attempts and jutted her thick hip out just so, much to her mother’s delight, much to my, let’s say, detriment. That night I spent awash in a sea of white and gold; linen, skin, and hair. Those robes you associate with me, meanwhile, were the first and only iteration. No attempt made ever to sex me up. Angels, after all, have flat crotches.

But so in that little interim between becoming demigods and the pimping-out beginning in earnest we spent nearly every hour in each other’s company. I imagined us as middle class Londoners hidden from the Blitz in a little bunker, huddled close and giggling to blot out the sounds of our home becoming rubble, sisters till the bitter end. Of course it feels fake now. A dream. 

We came up with a plan for one last rebellion. News of new superheroes, especially those belonging to the still-hot New Wave, inspired a sort of mad capitalist dash, and one effect was the creation of action figures. Glory Girl First Edition, acrylic, Nike swoosh across her stomach, ha ha ha. (None for me, I need not mention.) When Carol showed her the prototype (posed á la Superman),Vicky said under her breath, “Steve [my assigned lab partner] is gonna get one of these pretty sticky, huh.” So when they hit shelves I suggested late one evening something of a heist, and sure enough once Flashbang and Brandish were fully off-duty we snuck into the nuke-heat nighttime in black sweats, smiling neon and cackling with each facetious  _ shh!  _

We knew our target: the Target round the corner. We crept over the linoleum toward the toy section, and when we found the forty fresh units between Polly Pockets and Barbies Vicky threw her ikons to the floor and said, “We’ve gotta fucking incinerate  _ all  _ of these,” and got them in the shopping cart. Then on the way out I added a six-pack and a squat bottle of Jim Beam. And then we were fleeing the monkey-call alarms; I was over her shoulder and shooting through the mosquito sky. 

No fire presented itself so we settled for giving the things a watery death. What better grave than the Bay itself? I cracked open the whiskey and watched her chuck the plastic miles and miles, and when she wasn’t looking I slipped a figure out of its box and tucked it into my jacket pocket. So many still remained. No chance keeping the tide at bay. Vicky was acrylic forever now, and maybe it was better that way: even I couldn’t change her in that form. She tried and failed to shotgun one of the PBRs, still somehow ended up drunk, flew us home in inebriated loops, and then it was my turn to carry her. I tugged her boots off and assured she was snug below the blanket she’d had since birth. I watched her start to snore and thought: Amy, you are worthless.

I ran a bath. My whole body stung with numbness and stunk with the sort of sweat only the combo of shoplifting and alcohol can cause. I pulled out my new doll and looked up her skirt and discovered safety shorts, a common accessory for capes and idols both. I kissed her chest. I undressed and dropped into the steaming water and rubbed acrylic-Vicky’s fist along my labia. The regression wasn’t lost on me. Only things missing were miniature boats and crayons with which to draw across the ceramic. I stuck the fist up my cunt, and all I wanted was more despite the spikiness. Arm, head, chest in a quick slick series. In the end I could only get her in up to her waist — her knee at ninety degrees proved too painful to push past. 

I remember feeling complete.

#

So this is what they mean they say history rhymes. I’m on my way to steal Vicky back one more time. Bongtu and I watch screens through clear shopfronts screaming news of nuclear tests to the north. He tells me a plan’s in order. He’s got a pretty good idea of where they’re keeping her (although exactly how he knows it he refuses to say). Only a hop, skip, and a train away. “Amy,” he says while we wait trackside, “Amy, you must understand this is not the only way. Leaving is a possibility. You must understand.”

“It isn’t. I understand perfectly. I come back without her Carol will kill me. I mean as in literally.”

“Amelia. This is not an issue of valor. This is not an issue of nobility. You seem to think it is: I see it in your eyes. This is what They want you to do. I am only a tool. I am only in your story because They want me to be. If They did not need me to be a catalyst, a courier, I would be dead. They would recycle me. I would be a water bottle with an enormous green triangle across my chest.”

“Who the fuck are They, anyway, Wax-bastard? Really you’ve given me jack-shit on that front. ‘Cauldron’? What the fuck is that? It’s not an answer. It’s for sure not  _ the  _ answer: even I can see that.”

The train comes serpentine into the station to save him from the question, and we shove ourselves ungracefully into the sweating midday pack. Pretty girl (as in idolworthy face/proportions) all in blue watches her reflection in the plexiglass, which flickers and morphs from every irregularity in the tunnel. I remember when it was Lola in this squished position with me instead of this tall doll, this inflexible inaction figure. I imagine the Ken routine doesn’t end beneath his pants. It’d mean no weak points. In the end I need him. I drape his arms over my shoulders: a cape for a cape.

The building he claims contains Vicky is on the other end of the river, stuck in the center of a sea of clones, just another hunk of rebar and reflective glass, another soulless something at the edge of Seoul. “It’s actually an apartment building They use to store trainees,” he says. “It formerly belonged to H! Entertainment’s competitor, PY Entertainment.”

“What’s with all the goddamn acronyms? I’ve always wondered . . .”

“More favorable with the foreign market, is my hypothesis. Focus groups associate Roman characters with the American dollar. Although it can backfire, of course. The government hit PY with McCarthyesque fines: they thought it stood for Pyongyang. You can imagine what the economy would look like if Samsung had made the same mistake.”

“So what  _ does _ PY stand for.”

“Nothing. That’s the great comedy of it. It was a name created to sound like initials, to give the illusion that someone competent ran the company. JYP has Park Jin-young, SM Lee Soo-man. So they thought it would lend them credibility.”

“And what about H!?”

“I’ve no clue. Hongdae, maybe, where it was founded. Or perhaps hegemony? Hierarchy? Harry S. Truman? Your guess is as good as mine. There is less order at this level of corporate power, Amy Dallon, than you might have previously believed.”

Someone exits via the front door, a bony girl maybe four years my junior. She stops at the crosswalk and checks her phone. The light goes red and she stands still. And then when it’s green again she hurls the phone under the screeching wheels of an oncoming bus and walks with perfect calm into the center of the street and a cab rams her full-speed and she goes ragdolling half comically through the smog and wraps around an overhead pole. Crimson shoots ballistic from her mouth and rains on my top lip. 

I chirp and Bongtu bends to look me in the eye and says, “Now. You must go now. Seize this opportunity. She is in there. She is in there. You must find her. Be careful. I will repeat myself: If They catch you, kill yourself before They can turn you into their tool. Do not delay. Now! Now!”

So I go sprinting into the building, through the rotating door then —  _ thunk! _ something gives way below me and the floor is gone and my head hits glossy ground and then I’m tumbling through some Scooby-Doo chute and losing consciousness quick. . . .

#

Now as I find myself once again in the inky dreamspace — it’s been a unilaterally atrocious week for brain-health — I’ve got time to complete the reverie:

Here I was in my waterbirth fantasy, slurring mumbled words about crowning, placental consumption, still numb drunk, acrylic Vic still stuck up my ugly unkempt cunt, burnt-copper hair like coral, caught in the awesome silence of a familiar bathroom at night. I passed out in this position, of course. Murphy's Law, and so on and so on. Came to with the knowledge it was morning and the smell of metal: the water had gone cherry-colored in my slumber. Not quite time for the obvious explanation, so I imagined it must’ve been some nick below — for sure enough she was still down there — although I never felt pain. I scrambled to pull her free, get the water draining. Some vomit got out, I’ll admit. I splashed around whaleishly, too weak even to get to my knees. 

And — of course! — Vicky came in clad solely in a robe, last-night-Ames having forgotten to click the lock, and she screamed, and I could do nothing but cover myself. 

“Oh Jesus Christ, Amy,” she said when the confusion cleared. “I thought you’d fucking slit your wrists or something.”

“Nosebleed,” I said, and shivered.

“Well then get out of there,” she said. I managed to crawl over the edge of the tub and into a towel she held low, as though I were some poor dog (poor bitch), and she swaddled me — truly swaddled me! And I fell into her arms, drunk mother to too sober daughter in under twelve hours, a record I’m sure. “You smell like pennies,” she said. “I love you,” she said.

Then when the last drops gurgled out she spotted the doll slimy with afterbirth and went: “Amy . . .”

“Can I keep it?” I said, and looked up into her wide, naive eyes, and she nodded melancholically. We stayed that way awhile. 

I blink my eyes and it’s a match-cut of sensation, i.e. I am once again held. I rub sleep from my eyes and revel for half a second in the easy weightlessness of my new lumpy mattress of flesh, but soon I can no longer ignore the identity of my holder, nor attribute it to a lingering dream-logic: it’s Lola. Who else? It’s near black wherever I am but I could never forget her face. She brushes long-unwashed locks out of my vision and goes, “Oh, baby . . .,” in Korean. The most movement of which I’m capable is a languid twist of my fingers — not that I’m so eager to move.

“Where . . . ?” I say.

“Don’t worry, baby,” she says. “You’re safe. We’ll take care of you.  _ I’ll _ take care of you. I’m not angry, if that’s what’s got you panicked. I overreacted, I know I did. I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve to see that side of me. You’re too important. Oh, you’re so beautiful. So cute. I could just eat you up. . . .”

I flick my eyes around REM-style and spot through a wall of bars Vicky strapped to a chair, and I grope limply for her. “Mm,” goes Lola. “Sorry about the geography. We’re sort of short on space at the moment.”

“Why?” I say. “Why am I so important?”

“Well, we’ll get to that, probably. I’ll give you a hint, baby, just because you and poor old Bongtu got so close. The H in H! Entertainment, my love, stands for Hiroshima. . . .”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You should check out the most recent addition to this series if you haven't ;)


End file.
